Word: pitcher
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...pacing and smoking in his office after a one-run victory, "shaking in my boots," he calls it. The Orioles are making their move on the American League's Eastern Division leader, Milwaukee. Jim Palmer, 36, Baltimore's preening pitcher, has won ten straight games. So Palmer is going to outlast Weaver after all. Neither man brooks any opinion but his own, and they have been legendary adversaries. "Every single gray hair I got," says Weaver, 52, "I got from Palmer." Once, when Earl was hopping mad at Palmer, Palmer chose the moment of Weaver's highest...
...walk there. Coiled in a crouch that allows the pitcher only a 10-in. strike zone, Henderson has earned a league-leading 109 strolls from the plate, batting No. 1 for the beleaguered (fifth place in the American League West) '82 version of Billy Ball. Once on base, he is an electric offensive threat. When he leads off from first, infields become positively giddy, outfields flounder about like regional ballet corps, and pitchers are afflicted with tics and shudders. "You know he's going to go," says Angels' catcher Bob Boone. "The question is, which pitch...
Pacing off a precise 3½ steps from the base, Henderson screws his cleats firmly into the dirt and crouches knock-kneed, like Jerry Lewis imitating a baseball player. When the pitcher releases the ball, however, Henderson, having received the go sign from Martin, accelerates into hyperdrive. In two steps he reaches full speed, and a few strides later dives head long into the dirt-a timesaver that makes his body vulnerable to an opponent's cleats and knees. "I don't hit the ground too hard," he explains. "I come in like an airplane." By the time...
...shirts and balloons, the player still hangs out in "Henderson Heights," a 50-seat block of outfield seats he buys for underprivileged kids. Sometimes during games, Centerfielder Dwayne Murphy must tug him back on the field from autograph signing. "I get bored," Henderson admits. Says his former roommate, Pitcher Mike Norris: "Rickey is cocky, but conceit hasn...
Some of his misbehavior is relatively innocent, if unjustified, familiarity. But it can lead to ugliness. When he pinched the wife of former Atlanta Braves Pitcher Dick Ruthven, the player made the incident public and demanded, successfully, to be traded. Jane Turner keeps her opinion of such exploits to herself...